The House of the Hotaru
by She's So High
Summary: This is an AU story set in a futuristic world where a war wages not only between two political powerhouses, but also between men and women. And the only safe place for a woman to be is a brothel. There will be romance in the story as well, your regular


House of the Hotaru

  
  


By Lady DeathAngel

  
  


Disclaimer: Don't any of the many in my fic. Anime characters that is. They all belong to their respective owners and I am writing this fic because I want to, not because I'm making money off of it. So don't sue me. Cuz you won't get much. Unless the fifteen cents I *can* call mine entices you . . .

  
  


A/N: Hello everybody! How ya doin'? Good I hope. Anyway, this is my first attempt at a crossover. It's not a *real* crossover as I'm still focusing on the G-boys and girls. However, many other characters do pop up, some are just mentioned, and others are actually key characters. I don't have the whole plot set in my mind yet (^^;) but I know enough to tell you this takes place in a futuristic universe complete with space colonies, bounty hunters, brothels, two major wars between OZ and the colonies and men against women, and . . . Gundams! Yay! A GW story wouldn't be complete with out some kick@$$ MS battles would it? 

Warnings go as follows: None for this chapter, but later their will be some heavy stuff taking place (everything from rape to domestic violence). Lime situations will probably be abundant, but there won't be enough of *that* kind of action to rate it NC-17. Cursing is a guarantee and there will be plenty of action, adventure, angst, and romance in later chapters. Not much else to say except, have fun on your journey through my twisted world. Oh, and, please keep all hands, arms, legs, imaginations, and attention spans in the fic at all times, and enjoy your ride . . .

*=emphasis, like italics

""=spoken words

''=thoughts(none of those so far)

  
  


Prologue

Hope in a Brothel 

  
  


A blue neon sign blinked and flickered in the twilight of the L-2 colony cluster. House of the Hotaru it read. A smile crossed the dirty face of the woman standing beneath it. That sign and the building below it represented a haven, a safe house, to her. A safe house for her endangered daughter. 

"You'll be safe here, dear. The owner of this place, Lady Une, will take good care of you." She said.

The young woman beside her stared up at her. "Are you leaving me?" 

Her mother nodded. "Yes. But only for a while." She said. It was a lie though. She would never see her again. 

"Why are you leaving me *here*?" 

An emotion the girl didn't recognize passed through her mother's blue eyes. She wiped her daughters smudged cheeks with her thumbs before she answered.

"I can't take care of you. I can't afford to keep you anymore. You'll be much better off here. You'll be able to eat and sleep on a bed and be warm and clean, I can't give you that."

"I don't care Mother! I want to stay with you! Father told me to stay with you and take care of you!" 

Her mother's eyes teared up. "Oh honey, I know. But Father isn't here to take care of the both of us and I can barely take care of myself, what with the war being as bad as it is now. I won't be able to take care of a teenage girl too. Not the way a mother should be able to look after a teenage girl.

Honey, promise you'll take care of yourself. And when you're old enough, leave here and become something more then the ordinary woman. Become the princess, no, the queen you were born to be."

"But Mother . . ." 

"No! Promise me!"

"Okay. I promise."

The young girl's azure eyes began to water as her mother leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She drew her close to her body and hugged her tightly, smoothing the honey-gold hairs on her daughter's head. 

"I love you. Remember that." 

"I love you too mother."

The woman drew back, kissed her cheek, and then knocked on the large door before them.

"I'll always love you. Remember your promise. Goodbye Relena."

And then her mother walked away.

"Goodbye Mother." The girl whispered as the door opened. 

"Excuse me?" 

The girl looked up at a brown haired woman with glasses and stern, but kind eyes.

"What can I do for you?" She asked.

"My mother brought me here." Relena said.

The woman nodded. "Right. Come on in."

  
  


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Relena stared down at her hands and sighed. She didn't like it here already. Not that she'd expected to like it here. As much as her mother liked to pretend it was a nice place, Relena knew just what it was. A brothel. The House of the Hotaru. The House of the Fireflies. And Relena was going to be one. A Hotaru. 

She grimaced. She'd lived ten of her nearly sixteen years on the streets. She was a guttersnipe by definition, but she was no whore. Not like her mother had been before she'd met her father. What Relena didn't understand was why her mother had left her at a brothel. She knew that Relena wasn't that kind of girl. 

She sighed. Maybe her mother had just thought she would be safe as a Hotaru. It made sense, didn't? While a war was being waged between OZ and the colonies and the planets and then the wars between men and women, women were being killed and captured by the thousands. Many of them forced into enslavement. Women on the streets were in more danger then most. And that's what Relena and her mother had been. Women on the streets.

Whores were safe because they were already in their place, so to speak. The oppressive male race who made it impossible for women to lead good lives seemed to think of women as toys. No, more like androids. They believed that it was a woman's job to cook, clean, service their husbands and produce male heirs. Whores did one of those things, they serviced men. And that was enough to give them all a near-permanent reprieve.

As a whore Relena would be able to live. Maybe even to see the end of the war. Still, she would rather have died then be one. But she'd made a promise to her mother, and no matter how much she hated her situation, Relena never broke a promise.

"You don't belong here." Said a sneering voice. 

Relena's head shot up and her eyes locked with those of a tall, slender blond. The other girl's gray eyes were topped with strange eyebrows that branched off in an almost elegant, if freaky, fashion. She propped a hand on her hip and lifted one of the eyebrows.

"Well. What are you doing here?"

"My mother left me." She said. 

The girl's lips lifted into a sneer. 

"*You're* the one?" 

"The one what?"

The girl rolled her eyes and strode into the room a little further.

"Lady Une told me there was a newbie here. I'm supposed to take you to Miss Ryoko so that you can learn the trade, so to speak. I didn't think I'd be coming to get a virginal wannabe princess."

Relena frowned. "So what if I'm not tainted like you? It just proves I have class and you don't."

The girl growled low in her throat. 

"Listen *Princess*, if you're gonna be one of us, you're gonna have to realize something. Here, customers don't care if you have class or not. All they care about is how good you are in bed. And if you aren't, they'll beat you. If you want us to back you up when that happens, you're going to have to treat us with a little bit of respect."

Relena hmphed. 

"It's not like I asked to come here." She said, more to herself then anything. Then she sighed and stood slowly. "Fine then. Take me to this Miss Ryoko person. My name's Relena by the way."

The other girl nodded at her. "My name is Dorothy Catalonia." She stared at her expectantly for a moment before speaking again. "Don't *you* have a last name?" 

Relena shrugged. "Does it matter? Do customers here *care* about my last name?" 

"I guess not." Dorothy said. "It's just kind of sad if you don't have a last name." 

They left the small, dark room in silence. A few minutes later Relena spoke again.

"It's Darlian." She said. "My last name, that is to say, my father's name was Darlian." 

Dorothy stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes widening. 

"You're the late Minister's *daughter*?" 

Relena shook her head, stopping as well. "No. I'm the late Minister's mistake. He was supposed to have a son. I wasn't one. He hid me away. He loved me but, not enough to admit his failure to produce a male child. I've never told anyone my last name before."

"And rightly so." Dorothy said, beginning to walk again. "You know how much you'd be *worth* if anyone knew you? Way more than *me*." 

Relena frowned. "What do you mean more than you?"

Dorothy shrugged. "I mean that I'm the granddaughter of one of the leaders of OZ and the cousin of Treize Kushrenada and I'd be worth a pretty penny, if anyone knew who I was. No one knows my last name either, aside from the other Hotaru here." 

Relena nodded and continued walking in thought. Strange. Both she and Dorothy were at the same brothel, both them technically non-existent, both of them worth a lot . . . 

"Here we are." Dorothy announced. 

She knocked on the door and a voice called that it was open. Dorothy pushed it open and Relena's jaw dropped in shock. The room was large and beautiful. But so dark. The primary colors being gray and black and red. Still, the bed was large and looked comfortable, as did the love seat in the middle of the room. A window as open directly across from the doorway, overlooking an alleyway. 

"Miss Ryoko, we've got a new trainee." 

A woman materialized suddenly in front of both of them and Relena jumped slightly. The woman's yellow eyes narrowed as she looked Relena up and down. She placed her hands on her hips and shook her head. 

"Another pure-blood." She said with disgust in her voice. "Lady Une is hell-bent on turning all of the pure-bloods on this colony into whores isn't she?"

"It's all coincidental Miss Ryoko." Dorothy stated softly but firmly. 

Ryoko snorted. "Ha. That's what she *wants* you to think. But there's way more to this then coincidence." 

"Pure-bloods are safe here Ryoko, you know that." 

Relena glanced around in search of the voice but didn't see a body attached to it. Not until a large star appeared in the ceiling and a small body with bright pink hair dropped from it. She stood and dusted off her legs before turning to Relena. 

"Hi! I'm Washu, and this monster of a Hotaru here is my daughter, Ryoko." 

Relena's lip curled.

"They run a mother/daughter service here?"

"No they don't. What Washu means is that she created me, she isn't really my biological mom."

"Like fun you say! I used my own . . ."

Ryoko clamped a hand over Washu's mouth and sighed. "She talks too much to be a whore anyway. She's sort of our chief engineer. She also invents a various assortment of things to make a Hotaru's stay here more comfortable. And safe."

"Look, Ryoko, the place opens up in less than an hour. If you're gonna start your lessons, start them soon."

"Oh, okay, *fine*." She turned to speak with Relena but Washu was alread examining her. Ryoko hung her head and sighed. Did Washu *ever* butt out?

"Oh, nonononono, this will *never* do. First things first, you need to take a bath. And get some new clothes . . . Dorothy, do you know anyone who's her size?"

Dorothy frowned in thought. "Hmm. Well, not Cathy, she's got bigger breasts. Sally isn't as sickeningly skinny, Miaka and Akane are both shorter . . ." She snapped her fingers. "What about Utena? She's about her height and build."

"That's fine. But does she having anything other then that pink outfit she always wears?"

"She should. Besides, that red haired guy that's always with her sends her clothes. There's bound to be something . . ."

"Hurry then. Get Utena and tell her to bring a nice big pile of clothes and some hot water. I've got soap and a scrub brush in here." She turned to Relena and smiled. "You'll be good and clean in no time!"


End file.
